Aniron
by Nestrik
Summary: Losing the one you love is the hardest thing you will ever have to go through, and Legolas is sure that he will not make it through unscathed.


A/N: The author would like to say that NO, they DON'T you sick minded little perverts, and that this is her second Legomance and would you please check out her first and as of this writing unfinished one. Its called Shield Maiden and the chapters are really short. Please read it? For me?  
  
Aníron  
By Nestrik  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
The shadows of the woods had entranced him ever since he had been a child. The sun had to play across the leaves just so to produce the mystic golden green quality of light that distinguished the Rhovanion day from the Rhovanion night. The Wilderland was a large place, but Mirkwood- Mirkwood was its own pocket, its own word, inside of it. He viewed his childhood home as a savage place, just awakening to the dawning of civilization. Their homes were in the treetops. The branches served for rafters, the leaves for the shingles and the sky, sun, moon and stars for the ceiling.  
  
Legolas Greenleaf walked back to his father's great hall in the trees. He had completed his shift in guarding the creature Sméagol. To the east the sun was setting, painting the sky a brilliant scarlet hue. To the west night approached, the indigo wonder that never ceased to amaze even one of the Elven race. He stood on the ground for a moment, the leaves sighing under his feet and the wind rustling the leaves, breathing in the night as it approached, as the squirrels stopped their work of burying acorns for the forthcoming winter and the owl emerged, always the hunter with its large, bright eyes. Legolas's bow lay lightly on his back next to the quiver of arrows his father had just given him.  
  
To his right was another ladder, and a voice was drifting down from it, a sweet voice but a common one among the Elves. The voice was singing one of the Elven folksongs, of which there were many but all of which Legolas knew by heart. This particular one made his heart beat a pace or two faster, but he couldn't quite lay his finger on the reason why it did.  
  
He remembered a mother.  
  
Héo naefre wacode daegréd  
Tó bisig mid daegeweorcum  
  
Ac oft héo wacode sunnanwanung  
  
Thonne nihtciele créape geond móras  
And on thaere hwile  
Héo dréag thá losinga  
Ealra thinga the héo forléas  
Héo swá oft dréag hire sáwle sincende  
Héo ne cúthe hire heortan lust  
  
"Teladral!" Legolas said softly.  
  
The singing ceased, and for a moment the only sound was that of the wind blowing through the leaves. Then Legolas heard a soft swishing sound, and then feet appeared out of the tree to his right. A figure dropped down, gained its balance in the blink of an eye and turned.  
  
"What is it?" Teladral asked. Her black eyes were drawn together in confusion as she studied the man standing before her. Legolas's eyes looked large, large and full of sadness, but he stood as tall and as straight as ever, as an archer should always carry himself, and his white-gold hair was blowing in the slight breeze, a few strands lifting up from under his braids.  
  
"The song," Legolas said quietly.  
  
"It was bothering you again." Teladral approached Legolas and looked deep into his eyes, bluer than what she imagined the sea to be like. Legolas nodded, even though Teladral's statement had not been a question.  
  
"I'm sorry," she said softly. "If I had known that you were listening."  
  
Legolas sighed and buried his face in his hands. "No. I should not stop you from singing. I don't even recognize the emotions it stirs up in my heart." He lifted his head up and lifted a hand up and placed it around her cheek.  
  
"She never watched the morning rising," Legolas murmured as he looked into Teladral's eyes. "Too busy with the days first chores / But oft she would watch the sun's fading / As the cold of night crept across the moors."  
  
"And in that moment / She felt the loss," Teladral continued. "Of everything that had been missed / So used to feeling the spirit sink. She had not felt her heart's own wish."  
  
"The missing," Legolas whispered. Then, suddenly he whipped his hand from Teladral's cheek and slammed it against the trunk of the nearest tree.  
  
Teladral closed her eyes. When she opened them, Legolas was kneeling at her feet, his eyes pointed upwards, mirroring the moon. She felt him take her hands and pull gently downwards, so that she, too, was kneeling.  
  
Legolas gazed at the white moon, the orb that promised no shelter but safe passage when she was gone. Teladral watched Legolas's face, first in confusion and then in the slightest inklings of fear. Finally he lowered his eyes from the sky and looked straight at her again. He leaned forwards and his lips met hers, skin meeting skin and soul meeting soul. Teladral felt withheld passion in Legolas, as Legolas sensed in her. He leaned forwards, as did she, their lips pressing together like butterfly wings flapping on the sweetest breath of a spring breeze.  
  
They drew away simultaneously and neither of them said a word. They didn't have to.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
The next day a cry woke Legolas from his slumber. He leaped up and picked up his bow, which was lying beside his pallet. His father was gone. Legolas slid down the ladder to find the hall of Thranduil in a complete uproar. In the center of the confusion stood Thranduil himself. His arms were raised up towards the ceiling.  
  
As Legolas would tell the Council of Elrond in a time not far from then, the creature that the Elves called Sméagol had escaped with the help of a band of orcs. The search for the creature continued for many days, but without avail. Legolas ran through the forest with the soldiers as he had been trained to be an assassin ever since he had taken his first step years ago. The trail the orcs had left was plain, but Sméagol could not be found in the region.  
  
One day Thranduil called council in his great hall. Legolas sat at his right hand along with the king's many advisors and generals. Teladral's father, Entorel, was present. He had been mortally wounded in one of the battles against the orcs while the Elves had searched for Sméagol. By his side stood Teladral herself. If something had to be done, she would be called upon to accomplish it in the name of her father.  
  
Thranduil's eyes were dark with remorse as he spoke. "Elrond must be told of this occurrence. He has asked me about the state of the now escaped prisoner, and he has summoned Legolas to take part in a council." Thranduil sighed. "Entorel, do you have your report on the prisoner?"  
  
Entorel gestured to Teladral, who handed Thranduil a thick sheaf of parchment. Thranduil scanned it and sighed again.  
  
"Entorel, do you trust your daughter?"  
  
Entorel's eyes showed a hint of a smile and he shifted in his chair. "Yes, sir," he said creakily. "With my life."  
  
"Very well, then," Thranduil said. "Legolas, you will depart for Rivendell immediately. Teladral will go with you to deliver Entorel's report on the creature called Sméagol."  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
It was at dawn the next day that Teladral met Legolas at the lone stable in Mirkwood. Her horse was white, and she called him Rithannen. Legolas, who loved to ride but had never been given a horse of his own, took Thranduil's stallion Dambedir. The horse was entirely black.  
  
Teladral met Legolas's eyes and smiled. Legolas smiled back. "Ride safe," he said before hitching his saddlebags and mounting. They rode off together, to the north towards the forest road. Neither of them spoke, for the wind would have whipped the words out of their mouths anyway.  
  
Out of the corner of his eye Legolas could see Teladral's black hair streaming away from her brow. She was a hardened soul, Legolas knew. Her mother had gone to Lórien and had never returned. Ever since then Teladral had cursed the Lady of the Wood, who the Mirkwood elves knew as Galadriel, but she had also nurtured a strong desire to go there and to find her mother. Legolas knew this to be impossible. Even the Elves spoke of the strange powers of Galadriel. Ever since Legolas had met Teladral, when they were both mere children, the girl had been skilled with the twin knives that the Mirkwood elves so often used. When they had first met on the forest floor Teladral had pinned Legolas under her fiery black gaze and had drew her knives for no apparent reason. He himself had no weapon, and after a fearsome moment Teladral had smiled, sheathed her knives, and had introduced herself.  
  
Teladral enjoyed the steady rhythm of her stallion's hooves. Legolas rode a few paces in front of her, and she contented herself with steering the horse through a touch and a whispered word while watching his flaxen hair stream out from behind his pointed ears. The night before had been different than anything that Teladral had ever thought of experiencing. The twin knives shifted in her belt as the horse turned to avoid a tree in its path. The knives were her heart and her soul. They had been her mother's. Legolas's own mother had died many years before. An orc, it was rumored, though some said that she had thrown herself into the Anduin and had drowned. Teladral thought this to be impossible, but there was a second rumor that told of the woman leaving and going north on a pilgrimage to the Ered Mithrin. Teladral wondered at the melancholy that seemed to haunt Legolas. The reason was unknown to anyone, even to perhaps himself. He had told her that every night his father prayed that his mother would someday return from the place beyond the Grey Havens where she seemed to have gone.  
  
During the long nights spent under the stars when all that they had done was talk, Legolas had told her what he thought the sea and the fish would be like, and during the lone night where the two seemed to have found each other, Legolas again spoke of the sea.  
  
"A vast expanse of water," he said, staring up between the trees at the stars above. "Blue and green, foaming white against the cliffs. Fish. not the kind of fish that swim in the rivers. After this quest, I will go and see this ocean. Elves say that even they cannot see beyond the crests of the farthest waves."  
  
Teladral nodded and smiled. Legolas's voice seemed lighter, breathier when he talked of the sea.  
  
"It's wonderful to hear you speak this way," she said softly. She heard Legolas sigh with pleasure.  
  
Suddenly he turned towards her. His eyes shone in the starlight.  
  
"Teladral," he said softly, "do you love me?"  
  
She turned towards him, her brows drawn together in confusion.  
  
"If you do. when we get back to Mirkwood. if you want to.."  
  
It was the first and last time in her life that Teladral ever heard Legolas stutter. She smiled in the light darkness and laid her hand on Legolas's cheek. He stopped stuttering, closed his eyes and placed his own hand on top of hers.  
  
"Marriage," said Teladral, "is the ultimate, Legolas. Are you sure?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"So am I."  
  
They leaned over and kissed, stronger and stronger with each passing moment as they transferred their souls over to the other. Then they drew apart, their heads resting on each other's shoulders.  
  
They had eternity.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
The morning dawned harshly bright to Teladral's closed eyes. In the faze of her vision she could see Legolas, dressed with his bow slung across his shoulders, standing alert and ready. He turned at her slight movement and smiled as she folded up her equipment and strapped it to the back of her mount.  
  
They ate a few bites of lembas each and mounted their horses. The sun shown violently bright through the boughs of the trees. Even Legolas was squinting in the vivid brilliance.  
  
They heard the orcs coming long before the orcs even saw or heard them. Whispering a few words to their mounts, the horses trotted off and hid themselves.  
  
Legolas and Teladral held themselves perfectly still. Teladral's twin blades shone lightly in the sunlight, pointed upwards so that no light caused a telltale reflection. Legolas's bow was gripped in his hands.  
  
The orcs trail grew closer. Legolas could pick out at least ten different pairs of footsteps. They could be taken.  
  
The company halted, and one orc called out a harsh word. Several orcs grunted, and dead leaves rustled under their feet. They were breaking.  
  
Fifteen minutes passed in complete silence between the two Elves. The harsh grunts of the orcs seemed appropriate in the violently bright sunlight.  
  
The sun had just peeked out over the trees when another harsh word was uttered by one of the orcs.  
  
Leaves were trampled quickly in succession; Teladral's muscles tensed. They had been seen- how the orcs had noticed two still Elves, she could not fathom.  
  
Two arrows quickly whizzed through the air, knocking down one orc- the first arrow to his head, the second to his heart. With a groan and a whoosh of air, the orc sank the ground, sword clanging against his metal helmet.  
  
Nine orcs howled angrily. Arrows whizzed past as Legolas shot them one by one in succession from his bow. Teladral's twin Elven blades clashed with steel. She dazed one orc with a right hook to its neck, then finished the job with a clean swipe of her left blade.  
  
Legolas shot each orc which came within two paces of him. Three orcs were felled in this fashion before they realized that coming close to the silvery haired Elf was fatal.  
  
Five orcs remained as Teladral thanked the stars for granting her and Legolas with such a small company. For a moment she shifted her eyes away from her attackers and caught the silvery form of Legolas.  
  
I love him, she realized, and turned back to the orcs.  
  
Steel slipped passed Elven blade, sparking off its surface. Between Teladral's ribs the sword passed, into her lung and out the other side. The notched end cut cruelly into her flesh. She could feel the warm spread of blood on her back as she sank backwards.  
  
The light was fading quickly, and all that she could discern from the impending grayness were dark forms against the clouds of her vision. But light was coming closer; a light with two bright blue pinpricks, and the apparition was screaming her name.  
  
It was with her own name ringing in her ears that Teladral died.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Ten orcs lay dead behind him. His horse trotted slowly, growing ever nearer towards Rivendell. All he wanted to do was get there and rest. Rest. The word tasted vile on his tongue. Why should he rest? There was nothing to prepare for.  
  
The message, he tried to remind himself. The quest. The errand. Your responsibility to your people and to your father.  
  
But these thoughts were broken, shattered with the realization that she was gone. Crushed by the fact that he would never feel her kiss, or ever hold their child in his arms, its ears delicately pointed in the Elven fashion. He would never see her black hair free of the blood that was matting it. Her hands were no longer delicate, for they were stained with the eternal red that made mortals mortal.  
  
Her body rode with him, towards the Elven haven. Her hair was dark, black and red together. Her eyes were wide open. He had not the strength to close them. He had, however, removed the blade from her small stature.  
  
He could hear singing and knew that he was drawing closer to Rivendell. He felt no happiness at this thought. Her body would have to be buried here; flesh was flesh even though it was Elven, and soon it would begin to rot, marring her features until they were unrecognizable.  
  
Morbid thoughts threaded their way across his consciousness. Thoughts of what would have been. Memories of what had taken place.  
  
He supposed that he was lucky to have what so many others had searched for, even if it was gone now. He had truly, deeply loved her, loved her like there had been no time left.  
  
He hadn't known that she would be slaughtered. He would have forced her to stay in Mirkwood if he had. The parting kiss would be sad and bitter, but it would all be all right upon his return.  
  
Flashes of white glimpsed through the trees, and the singing voices grew into words. He would have to try to live, and he knew that he could survive, but he would never be the same person again.  
  
He had found and he had lost passion in only a few days. There had been no time. But he was glad that he had found it.  
  
He only wished that Elves were truly immortal.  
  
The voices formed into words, growing clearer by the instant. A single tear slipped down his cheek. It would be the only tear that he would ever shed.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
O môr henion i dhû  
  
From darkness I understand the night  
Ely siriar, êl síla  
Dreams flow, a star shines  
Ai! Aníron Undómiel  
Ah! I desire Evenstar  
Tiro! Êl eria e môr  
Look! A star rises out of the darkness  
I 'lîr en êl luthia 'uren  
The song of the star enchants my heart  
  
Ai! Aníron  
  
Ah! I desire  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
The End 


End file.
